


The garden beneath.

by LunnVic



Series: IwaOi Horror Week '18 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Horror, IwaOi Horror Week, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Plants, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:25:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnVic/pseuds/LunnVic
Summary: “Do you know what a human stone is?”, he asked, Hajime still paralyzed under the door’s frame.He swallowed.“A type of crystal?”“It’s an offering,” Tooru sighed, guiding the scissors to the bandages on his knee. “You gift a witch part of your body and the world gives you something in return. Sometimes it’s just a lock of hair, but that’s not a stone. No, a human stone is made of something else.”__________Or Iwaizumi wants to be immortal and Oikawa would do anything, anything, to make it possible.





	The garden beneath.

**Author's Note:**

> It's 6.00 in Spain and I don't know how English works anymore.
> 
> (how do you people punctuate dialogue??? its a mess)
> 
> This work has no beta so I'm sorry for the mistakes you will 100% find. Of course I've done something completely different with the prompt. Is this horror? I don't think so. I only know this has tons of blood in it.
> 
> ______
> 
> DAY 3: WITCH TRIAL
> 
> garden of poisons / **be careful what you wish for** / blood for blood / cult of mysteries / sacrificial lamb / **a necessary transformation** / the silver dagger behind your back / blood pacts / **those who** ~~kill men and~~ **harvest their organs for spells of immortality together, stay together, forever, like literally** / nine crow feathers, one eagle’s heart, and a cupped hand of iron-rich blood
> 
> For [Iwaoi Horror Week](https://iwaoi-horror-week.tumblr.com)!

It started with fucking _Twilight_.

It started with Hajime’s body intertwined with his body and both of them laughing at the special effects of the (now a classic) vampire movie. The living-room smelled like popcorn and also like him, and Tooru felt more relaxed that he had been in years. Maybe that’s why the idea occurred to him, brain rested and limbs warm against his.

“That would be nice, uh?”, said Hajime.

“What?”, he asked, looking up his phone. “What would be nice?”

Hajime looked at him with a raised eyebrow but answered anyway.

“Immortality.”

He blinked one, two, three times before slowly opening his mouth to answer, but his mind was blank. Well, not exactly blank. More like _burning_. Too many ideas, too many thoughts, too many of them revolving around what he just said. Did he…? No. Hajime didn’t know about him, or his parents, or nothing about his family or the blood in their veins. He smiled and Hajime rolled his eyes.

“So do you want to be immortal?”

Hajime answered with mouth full of popcorn and it wasn’t nor romantic or solemn, but it was (kind of) for Tooru. His shoulders tensed before Hajime opened his lips and say them, say the words:

“Yeah, why not?”

“But everyone would die, eventually. And you just…”

He shrugged.

“Everyone dies, in the end. Our end would be just a little bit later.”

“Our?”

And there was it, the delicacy. Tooru was used to his brute modals, his rough words, and it wasn’t usual for him to be so open, so sincere, about them. He swallowed, enjoying the moment, his smile becoming a grin at a furious speed. He couldn’t help it: his relationship could be named Teasing. Hajime didn’t even let him talk.

“You know what? I changed my mind. You’re too annoying to put up with for an eternity.”

“Noooo,” he whined (laughed), putting the popcorn aside and climbing to his lap.

Hajime turned his face away, trying to put some resistance but, like always, he ended up surrendering to the kiss. Tooru felt his smile against his lips and the salt of the popcorn on his tongue and his hands under his shirt.

Maybe Hajime was right.

Maybe they deserved an eternity of this.

 

 

 

“Hey, I’ve got something for you.”

Tooru turned to him, confused. Hajime wasn’t exactly an attentive person, but sometimes he came back from the grocery store with some sweets for him. That was he was expecting, extending his hands to him and closing his eyes, putting on a scene. They were stained with dirt and liquefied fertilizer, for he had been taking care of the house plants (because, yes, maybe Hajime was the responsible one, but none of them could deny Tooru had kind of a green thumb, every plant, flower and tree becoming even more lively around him), so when the present fell on his hands it felt heavy and warm on them. Definitely not a sweet.

Tooru opened his eyes.

“A stone!” he exclaimed, making it roll, feeling its rough tact, perfectly round on his palms. “Where did you…? Is it from the river at the end of the street?”

“Yes,” he answered, a little red cloud over his nose and cheeks. “I thought you’d like it, as you’ve been… collecting all those rocks lately.”

 _Lately_ wasn’t the exact word. Tooru had been accumulating all kind of stones all his life, and Hajime knew it.

Any kind of stone was fine. Small pink quartzes, turquoises, pyrites. Cheap crystals, expensive gems. He bought them on markets; pick them up from the ground… He cherished even the black asphalt of a broken highway.

“It looks like you.”

“How can a rock look like me?”

Hajime had not even finished the question when Tooru realized. His eyes went from the stone to his boyfriend and back to the rock again. He remembered _Twilight_ and Hajime talking about living forever and the ring he had found inside Hajime’s wardrobe, the one with the diamond. And, at the same time, Tooru could see the exact expression on his mother’s face when he moved with Hajime. _After all_ , she had said, tears on her eyes, _humans rot faster than witches._ And that was goodbye, because none of his parents wanted to watch him get old. And, eventually, die.

“You’re so good to me, Iwa…”

The name got caught on his lips. He only called him Iwa-chan when he wanted to mess with him (so, 90% of the time), because _Hajime_ seemed purer, whole, intimate on his lips. So he had never stopped to think about his name. His name. Witches only lived forever when loving an equal, but Hajime wasn’t one of them. Hajime wasn’t a witch but he had something else. He had his name and his (he hope so) eternal love for him and that was stronger than blood and magic and death.

“Your name is Iwaizumi,” he said, eyes wide open.

“Yes…?”

Hajime frowned, lost, but Tooru wasn’t listening. He was thinking. Planning.

“Your name is Iwaizumi.”

 

 

 

The day after, Tooru brought home with him _tons_ of seeds.

 

 

 

When Hajime got home, it smelled weird. The scent, or the reek, was sweet and heavy on his nose, and for a brief moment he thought it was blood. He stayed there, paralyzed, trying to find the origin of the smell. There were no stains on the floor or in the kitchen, so he ruled out that Tooru would have tried, and failed, to cook something difficult again; but when he looked again he saw that one of the drawers of the kitchen was open. From there, the metallic reflection of knives and forks made him shiver.

“Tooru?”, he called, retreating a few steps.

“Bathroom!”

The smell was there, too. It was then that he realized it wasn’t blood, not exactly, but something alike. He scrunched his nose while walking to the bathroom door, passing by the plants still humid from the last watering. Maybe that was the aroma. Maybe Hajime wasn’t used to the sweet scent of the sap, the flowers, the mud in the pots.

“Are you okay?”, he asked anyway, that uneasy feeling still digging itself a nest inside his ribcage.

“I’m just…”

And then a hiss of pain, Hajime’s shoulders tensing under the sound of it.

“Tooru?”, he insisted. “I’m coming in.”

“No! I’m _fine_.”

But he opened the door. Tooru looked at him with a frown and pursed lips. He was sitting on the bathtub edge, his chest naked and a clean bandage between his hands. Hajime had supposed he was taking a bath, because he could have sworn that there was steam coming out from under the bathroom door. No, he was sure of it. He had felt that sticky heat on his hand while opening it.

And, under the bandages on his knee, blood.

“What happened?”, he almost cried, approaching him with his hands ready to touch him, to help him with those bandages and all that blood on the floor and why there was so much blood?

“It’s okay,” Tooru tried to calm him, stopping him right where he was with a single gesture of his left hand. “I fell on my knee. What a bad luck, Iwa-chan, now that it was almost completely healed…”

“Where?”, he snarled, Tooru’s shoulders jumping at the harsh tone.

“In the kitchen.”

“How? There’s so much blood, Tooru!”

His laugh was loud. Tooru didn’t seem hurt. On the contrary, he seemed as cheerful as ever… And it was weird, having in mind that Tooru was usually the one to whine and annoy him every time he was sick, telling him he was going die to try and steal some cuddles from him.

“Blood? Where do you see the blood, Hajime?”

“T-the blood on your…”

Hajime looked at the red stains on the floor and on his bandages, but there wasn’t anything there. The only thing remotely comparable was the liquid antiseptic Tooru had used, spilling it everywhere and transforming the bandages into some sort of wet covering. He cursed under his breath, passing his hands through his hair.

“Fuck, sorry, I was… I mean, are you okay? Do you need some help?”

“Ah, don’t worry. I’m just finished,” and he sighed. “I hope not to die because a bad knee…”

Ah, there it was, the whining. Hajime snorted and closed the door after his back, at the other side Tooru yelling his name; the sound distorted an incomprehensible thanks to the laugh that accompanied it.

 

 

 

“You’re dripping.”

Tooru made a sound, or a purr, or something like that.

“ _Of course_ I am.”

“No, I mean…”

Hajime gently pushed him away, his hands wandering through Tooru’s naked body until he felt the unpleasant touch of wet bandages. Tooru tried to hold a hiss, but Hajime heard it even so. Under the moonlight, his face was a kaleidoscope of blues and shadows, and he could see teeth clenching behind lips. Hajime didn’t waste time, making them roll on the bed until Tooru’s back was against the mattress, his own hands running over his covered knee. There wasn’t any dark stain that could indicate blood loss or an open wound, so why was it wet?

“What are you doing?”, started Tooru with a sigh. “Can’t we go back to…?”

“No.”

It wasn’t at all the first time Tooru hid something from him, especially if it had to do with some serious injury, but he wasn’t stupid enough to act like his knee wasn’t hurting. Not in match season, not with the World Cup so close. He looked at him directly in the eyes, ignoring the way Tooru was arching an eyebrow and twisting his smile, telling him with no words to continue what he had left halfway. It was easy to surrender under that sight, and he would have if the wet bandage hadn’t felt so wrong against his fingers.

“I know you bought a ring.”

What?

“What?”

“I know you bought a ring with a diamond on it. When are you gonna…?”

“Are you trying to distract me?”, he cut him off, sharp.

“No,” but Tooru laughed, raising his arms to Hajime’s shoulders. He felt the touch of his fingers running through his hair, his nape. Tooru knew him too well, too much.

Wait. Tooru knew about the ring? He tried to draw back, but Tooru didn’t let him go, trapping him between his legs too; Hajime feeling the warmth of his naked skin against his, but, above all, feeling the wet trace of the bandages on his side. And it was there, too, the scent. The sweet and heavy smell that was neither blood nor antiseptic but that Hajime had smelled before in that house and couldn’t pint-point exactly where or how or when.

But, ah, the ring.

“What were you doing in my closet?”

“Looking for a shirt, mine where all dirty… You know, you have too many grey clothes, you should…”

“So, what is it?”

Tooru cocked his head, his hair becoming messier and messier every time he moved against the pillow. He frowned, confused, and Hajime asked again:

“What are you going to say?”

“To what?”

“To the fucking ring, Tooru, fuck. Do I have to return it to the store or…?”

Tooru didn’t answer. Not with words, at least, but with the way his arms pulled Hajime towards himself he supposed that was a yes. Oh, well, a no. He didn’t even have time to think about why Tooru would want to ruin something like his own wedding proposal, because then the kissing and the touching started again and he was so, so…

And that’s how you distract an Iwaizumi Hajime.

 

 

 

“We have to wait a month.”

“A month for you to think about it or a month for you to say yes?”

“Hajime, I already said yes.”

“Then?”

“Then?”

 

 

 

“This is my favorite one.”

“The river stone?”

“ _Your_ stone.”

His eyes were volcanic lava under the violent sunset light. He was rearranging his gem collection, now ordering them by color, a clear rainbow that set a trail of colored ghosts all over the floor. He remembered that one time when he had been on the point of asking why he was _so_ into gems, but then Tooru’s mother had made her entrance (ominous and theatrical all at once, just like her son) with a new quartz on her hand. He remembered how they had surrounded the crystal, looking at it like it had all the answers of the universe. And he understood. He understood that it was a family thing, so he never got to ask.

Tooru clicked his tongue and Hajime came back to the present. The point of his fingers were absently digging under the bandages of his bad knee.

“Are you in pain?”

“Don’t worry, Iwa-chan. A witch’s body is always hurting.”

He smiled.

“Now you’re a witch?”

“Now?”, Tooru repeated, smiling him back.

Hajime didn’t answer.

 

 

 

The scent was there again. Hajime followed it as if he were a police dog, inhaling the air, the sofas, the kitchen countertop. And then he found it, but… But there has to be a mistake. Yes, maybe his obsession with it had led him to this.

After all, there was no way Tooru were pouring fertilizer on his knee.

 

 

 

“I’m home!”

His clothes were damp with rain, the storm slamming the windows like it wanted to get inside. Hajime left the plastic bags of the grocery store on the floor, taking off the heavy coat that had been suffocating him after getting wet. The only light on the flat came from the kitchen, as well as the small sound of Tooru’s voice calling his name. There was nothing odd about the way he had said it, and even so Hajime felt every last muscle tighten, so fast and so brutal his heart started pounding like the storm outside.

Tooru was sitting on the kitchen countertop, in his right hand a pair of scissors.

“Do you know what a human stone is?”, he asked, Hajime still paralyzed at the door’s frame.

He swallowed.

“A type of crystal?”

“It’s an offering,” Tooru sighed, guiding the scissors to the bandages on his knee. “You gift a witch part of your body and the world gives you something in return. Sometimes it’s just a lock of hair, but that’s not a stone. No, a human stone is made of something else.”

Hajime shook his head, taking a few steps towards him. Tooru looked calm, almost dreamy, while cutting the bandages with the scissors. The sound of it made him uncomfortable, itchy, even though Tooru seemed to know exactly what he was doing; pulling the cloth with his free hand and revealing more and more skin. Tooru whimpered. And he did, too, when his gaze fell to his knee.

“What…?”, he managed to say, but he didn’t move. “Oh, god.”

“Hajime.”

“What the…? We need to go to the hospital. _Now_.”

“Hajime, no.”

Why was he so collected? How can he be so collected when his knee was swollen and blue and green and purple and there were lumps everywhere? Hajime looked for his phone, his hands trembling, but he stopped dead when Tooru pointed at him with the scissors.

“Stop.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”, he snapped, ferociously pulling the scissors aside. Tooru didn’t let them go, but he raised a sole finger in warning, narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “Put that thing down.”

Tooru sighed, ignoring him to move his bad leg back and forward, Hajime tensed and disturbed by the way the lumps inside his knee moved along like worms under the mud. His skin looked like it were going to tear at any moment, shiny with sweat and stinking of fertilizer.

“Please, tell me what is happening.”

“Remember when you told me you would like to live forever?”

Silence. Tooru was waiting for him to answer, so he nodded, his eyes never leaving the twin ends of the scissors. His boyfriend caressed his knee with them before sinking them in, and Hajime wanted to scream, but he didn’t, and Tooru opened his mouth as if to do it for him, but he didn’t. Hajime wasn’t the one with a razor buried inside, but the sight of it made him dizzy, the reek of blood (this time, actual blood) coming from the wound making everything even worse.

“Tooru, please, stop.”

“Shh…”

Green under red. Green and purple and yellow under a thick layer of red. Hajime wished he hadn’t seen them. The flowers. The flowers growing trough lacerations and ligaments, soaked in blood and in fertilizer. And when Tooru, tears on his eyes, started to pull apart skin and muscle, opening a new window with his own hands for them to rise, Hajime also wished he could make him stop. Or at least tell him so. To do something else that staying there, horrified, looking how his lover tore himself apart.

There was a garden beneath his skin, vines and flowers and grass and even algae, growing right from his muscles. Tooru looked at it as if the sight were beautiful. And it was breathtaking, sure, just not in the right way.

His eyes were full of love when Tooru looked back at him, red cheeks and swollen lips after biting on them for too long. There were tears, too. Of course there were tears.

“Witches can only live forever after trading a human stone with another witch. A human stone is made of bone, and it had to be blessed by the world.”

He said world like it was a name. World. Hajime wondered how his voice could stay so soft. Magic, maybe. Maybe he was really a witch. A witch with flowers instead of muscles and hands stained red.

“I’m no witch.”

“I know, love,” he smiled. “That’s why your human stone is different. It won’t come out from your body. You’ll have to pour yourself in something…” his back arched in pain. “In something already holy.”

He didn’t understand, but Tooru pointed to the living room with a dripping-red hand. There, the gems reflected the flashes of lightning in pink, purple and green, green, green. And, at the top of them, his rock. The river one.

“Tooru…”

“Bring it here, please, Hajime.”

“Can we just…?”

“It’s too late, love. Please, bring me the river stone.”

And he did it. Because even if there was enough blood to choke on it, it seemed like the bleeding had stopped at some point, too. The flowers and plants twitched when Tooru did and his bare chest was up and down in a peaceful breathing. Maybe he was hurting, but he wasn’t dying.

The rock felt different on his hand, _alive_. Hajime didn’t know if he wanted to be immortal, not when the price was Tooru’s leg… Fuck, he didn’t even know if this was real! Because what if Tooru had lose his mind and he was just playing along like a fool, so full of trust he even believed his boyfriend was a witch. But _It’s too late, love_ , had Tooru said.

“You’ll have to help me now,” he said when Hajime came back with the river stone. “I can’t… I can’t do it myself. The plants help me with the pain but it’s… not enough.”

“What do I have to do?”

Tooru’s voice was gentle, like when in high school he introduced the first years to the rest of the team. He used the same tone with Hajime now, telling him how to write his name with his own blood on the surface of the river stone, explaining how the kanjis of his name matched so perfectly to the stone that the World couldn’t tell the difference between both of them. That, in claiming the rock to himself, he was transforming it into a human stone.

The exchange was dreadfully painful for Tooru, his face buried in Hajime’s neck while Hajime cut the muscles and ligaments around his kneecap. The bone was round but flat, and fit perfectly in his now bloody (and trembling) palm. The river stone, however, was too big for the empty place his kneecap had left behind, but Tooru shrugged.

“It will fit, eventually. And it will heal the rest of my knee, too. It’s a win-win situation, Iwa-chan! I marry you and your stone finally heals my knee.”

“Marry?”

Tooru arched an eyebrow, teasing. He was still sit on the kitchen countertop, still wounded and bleeding, still a garden sprouting from every single cut; and even so, even so… Hajime didn’t remember a time when he was more beautiful. Of course they will have a lot of things to talk about after his wound was closed and healed (a fucking _witch_ ), but now…

“Well,” giggled Tooru, resting his arms on Hajime’s shoulders. “That’s how we do it. The witches, I mean. The marriage thing, I mean.” He must have seen something in his eyes, because he added. “I know it’s bloody and messy and it’s not exactly exchanging rings, but…”

Silence again.

“So, are we married?”

“Not… legally, but yes.”

So witches got married ripping each other’s bones off. Noted.

“And… what about the…?” He didn’t even know how to say it. “The immortality thing.”

Tooru smiled. God, how Hajime loved him. Bloody or clean or human or witch. He loved him so much.

“Oh, we are not immortals. Not yet.”

“Then, when?”

His smile became a full grin, cocked head included. His fingers caressed Hajime’s scalp.

“Well, first we have to consummate it.”

“I _knew_ there was something else. What is it now? Do I have to rip your heart off while I fuck you?”

Tooru chuckled, half laugh half whimper; Hajime slipping between his legs and his hands on Tooru’s waist. Then they both looked down at his injured knee, still full of green, and Tooru left a kiss on his temple.

“I think the first step is to bandage it again.”

“Are you sure? Don’t you witches _consummate_ the marriage with an open wound? Cowards!”

Tooru laughed and laughed and laughed and Hajime couldn’t stop staring at his closed eyes, at his straight teeth, at the shiny layer of sweat on his shoulders and the spots of blood all over them.

“I’ll love you forever,” Hajime said bluntly, honesty pouring from his lips.

Tooru kissed him, soft.

“Prove it.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
